Friday, June 16, 2006

Thanks for all the lovely comments to my previous post. Keep 'em coming! It's nice to know I have readers at all. Readers who are so impassioned by my writing to take the time to post such lengthy, well-reasoned rebuttals are more than I could have hoped for when I started this blog. Youreanidiot brings up some very valid points in response to my drivel that only really had one tiny micro-point--that a guy trying to explain an esoteric point of fruit fly physiology brought in what was to me a completely superfluous analogy. Being called out for going on and on about a guy being too verbose is an irony worthy of Penguin Perspectives.

Now, I understand that sports objects like a football field and olympic-sized swimming pool have become de facto units of measurement, although in the latter case, I don't understand why. How many of us immediately visualize how big an Olympic-sized swimming pool is? At any rate, the use of sports analogies for measurements has officially gotten way out of control. Here is a paragraph from an actual article about a recently-published biology study of fruit flies:

"To put that into perspective, if humans made sperm that long and you took a six-foot man and stood him on the goal line of a football field, his sperm would stretch out to the 40-yard line," said Adam Bjork, a Ph.D. student at Syracuse University in New York.

That is a long way to go to say "120 feet." While we're at it, someone tell that Ph.D. student that only 15% of American men are six feet tall or taller, and most non-American males have a very different idea of what constitutes a football field.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

One of the few things I learned in pursuit of my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree was never to trust any Art or Literature, particularly when they start with a capital letter. Talented people can make beautiful things. This is one of my current favorites. When people try to be Artistic, particularly when they are being Artistic in lieu of being Talented, large volumes of crap almost always follows. The situation then snowballs as people, not wanting to seem crass, start spouting nonsense about how visionary the Artist is.

Case in point: the Royal Academy in Britain recently put on display the pedestal support for a statue, in the mistaken belief that it was a work of art. The actual sculpture that the pedestal was supposed to support was judged not worthy of inclusion in the exhibit.

I am taking bets in the Battle of the Invasive Weeds '06. In one corner, we have thistles (no, I don't know what kind--they bear a vague resemblance to rhubarb and get to be 5 feet tall or more if left alone). Attempting to occupy the same corner by the barn, we have spearmint. Both are plants that, given a third of a chance, will take over everything. Now, going leaf-to-leaf, which one will come out on top?

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

First, I finally got rid of the rest of the dead vines growing around the garage door. That had been on my to-do list since we bought the house more than a year ago. At first, the problem was that, having lived in apartments our entire adult lives, we did not own a ladder. Once that was remedied, we ran into problem #2: I won't get up on the ladder. "Heights" is on my short list of absolute fears (below clawed crustaceans, for those of you keeping track--I would climb a ladder to get away from a Dungeness crab). However, today, I managed to talk myself up onto the fourth rung of the ladder and take the loppers to the vines until I could yank them down and chop them into little pieces for composting. Getting eyeball to eyeball with one's gutters without holding on to anything might not count as an accomplishment to most people, but most people would also comfortably go out onto the balcony of their third floor apartment and don't have anxiety attacks on the Sky Ride at Cedar Point. I am not most people.

The second Whoop-de-do is that I spotted three emerging tomatoes on the plants today. This, after a bout of blossom drop that made me think I might have nursed these from seeds for nothing. With luck, these are just the first three of many.

Monday, June 12, 2006

How is it that cats that are normally comatose all afternoon suddenly get a driving urge to run around after I put a fresh coat of polyurethane on the parquet? It is supposed to dry for 6-12 hours with no one stepping on it, so I erected barriers around all access points. Something about the smell of Orange Glo seems to bring out their inner mountain goat.

About the Penguinophile

I was a penguin person even before a beaking incident with an African penguin that transferred actual Spheniscidae genetic material into my bloodstream in 2009. To bankroll my future as Penguin Woman, I'm an editor and author. My first novella is expected to come out in 2011.